Mike Nichols column: Schools are full of little Armstrongs

Between 25 percent and 30 percent of students nationwide admit to having cheated on tests.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Jim Wollack, in addition to doing a lot of research on cheating, also runs a testing and evaluation service that includes a room where students take exams.

The space has glass walls, and cameras. Exams are proctored. The students know they are being watched. They also know they aren't allowed to use cellphones - latter day encyclopedias-cum-calculators, after all - to cheat.

Some just go ahead anyway.

"We have had students with cellphones ringing in their pockets while we are confronting them, saying, 'What cellphone? I do not have a cellphone,'" he said.

They're academia's Lance Armstrongs. And they're more common than you likely think.

About 5 percent of students during any given test typically cheat by copying or using crib notes or cellphones or some other method, Wollack said. And although a smaller percentage are inveterate, practiced cheaters, a lot of students fall into the 5 percent category at various times.

The International Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson has been surveying colleges and gauging cheating behaviors for 20 years, said Teddi Fishman, the center's director. Consistently, between 25 percent and 30 percent of students across the country admit having cheated on a test. Half admit having plagiarized.

I know it's nothing new. I once lived with a guy who hired somebody to take a test for him. I don't know if he's in prison now or running a company somewhere. The percentage of people who are cheaters has remained pretty steady during the last couple of decades. But it's also true that the cheaters are getting more creative and sophisticated - and not just because of technology.

There's a whole phenomena of students using "study drugs" to get an unfair advantage by improving attentiveness or even memory.

The dopes, it seems, are now the dopers.

It doesn't matter what sort of school you go to - Ivy League or Tech School, secular or religious, public or private - students cheat in about the same percentages. And the sad truth is that relatively few get caught based on university disciplinary statistics. Basically, there are some really good, really committed liars out there, and not a whole lot of willingness to confront them.

"Relatively few get caught, and the ones who do get caught more often than not get off with - I don't know if a hand-slap is the way to describe it - but nothing terribly severe," Wollack said. There is a fairly pervasive attitude among faculty, he said, that their job is to teach kids, not to police them. Plus, reporting a cheater is confrontational and drawn out and, many professors rationalize, often not worth it.

The result is that cheaters win, probably more often than we want to admit. And in what is often a zero-sum game for grades and jobs, the rest lose. The 5 percent elbow out the others, walk away with a better grade and a better transcript and even, if they are persistent enough, a better resume and job. In the end, they're not just cheating on a test; they're also cheating whatever company is unfortunate to hire them before finding out they can't write or figure out a simple equation.

The honest kids, meanwhile, sit by and watch the jobs go to cheaters who got through school with an electronic encyclopedia in their pocket - and professors too often too important or cowardly to intervene.